Chaos in #NY23

The first and solitary time that coup-plotting Trumper Chris Jacobs displayed some bravery and bucked his party’s diktats on guns, that party went into overdrive to drum him out of office.

The next thing that soon-to-be-former Congressman Chris Jacobs did was withdraw from the race for election to Congress in the newly drawn NY-23.

Almost literally within a week he went from a profile in courage moment to being the third rich guy named Chris to quit Congress over heat he couldn’t handle. Profile in cowardice.

Because New York isn’t a red state and NY-23, despite how rural it is, (but note it includes Jamestown, Elmira, Olean, Hornell, and second-ring Buffalo suburbs), might just be willing to elect a guy with an (R) after his name even if he says sane things about access to assault weapons. At the very least it was worth a shot. It was worth it for Jacobs to take a principled stand and answer for it.

It would be fundamentally irresponsible for any candidate for any office within the Buffalo media market to not – at a bare minimum – advocate for raising the age to purchase a firearm to 21. Jacobs expressed a willingness to do more than that and for that he earned my praise. Almost as quickly, he reveals how empty his “principles” were.

As usual, Democrats – who have nominated someone you’ve never heard of from a place you may vaguely be able to place on a map – have a huge problem with messaging. It’s so easy for Republicans to take literally any effort to prevent mass shootings and scream about how it’s violative of the 2nd Amendment (regardless of whether that’s true). Democrats have to stress that legislation to prevent teenaged psychopaths from easily obtaining weapons of war is consistent with 2nd Amendment protections. Few freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution are absolute – even speech. So, if the government has the power to ban obscene speech, it has a similar power to declare that an 18 year-old cannot possess an AR-15 to shoot up a school, and a 30 year-old cannot open-carry a rocket-launcher at Wendy’s.

Despite all his prior bad acts and omissions, when it came time for Jacobs to choose between the victims and the killers, he chose the victims. This was, for his party, haram.

But Jacobs will be out at the end of the year, so he becomes a premature lame duck. If only he had staked out a brave and correct position and stuck to it, maybe he could have earned himself some kudos for, e.g., being a party maverick who has met the moment and come out on the right side of an issue that deeply wounded his city.

Yet the Republican Party, even in indigo-blue New York State, has become so extreme, nihilistic, and bloodthirsty that it would rather enable the next mass shooting than piss off its base, the people whom talk radio, Fox News, Trump, and Christian nationalism have brainwashed into thinking that mass killings are an acceptable price to pay for whatever they think “freedom” is.

They’ll tell you it’s everything but guns. It’s doors. It’s security. It’s a need to have armed soldiers in every classroom. It’s mental health. It’s video games. It’s rap music. But schools in other countries have more than one door, they have kids with mental health issues, they have the same video games and music that we do, but what they don’t have is a proliferation of guns. This means that other countries have a different calculus of what “freedom” means, and frankly it means that people are reasonably secure in the knowledge that their kids will go to school and come home alive; that the absence of guns obviates the need for TSA-style school security. Of course, most of these countries have stronger, uniform safety nets so that kids with mental health issues get free or affordable access to the care they need. They also restrict firearms in such a way that 18 year-olds have practically no ability to waltz into a local shop, buy a gun made for waging war, and shoot dozens of random, innocent people.

When the time comes for Republicans to stand up and be counted on things like expanding access to free or affordable care in this country, they refuse. The only thing they’re good for nowadays is backsliding our democracy and the culture wars. Just ask Pizza Hut and the Secret Service. That and enabling more maniacs to buy more guns to do more mass shootings.

Freedom to shop at the grocery store or attend school secure in the knowledge that you won’t get shot dead would seem to be worth advocating for, even if you’re a Republican.

With Jacobs’ departure, the Republicans now have a choice between Nick Langworthy, Carl Paladino, and Marc Cenedella. With idiot vote fraud convict Rus Thompson and his execrable wife running things, Paladino’s campaign is certain to make headlines for the dumbest things possible. Things like Carl posting some conspiracy bullshit on his Facebook page calling the Buffalo and Uvalde massacres a false flag, and when exposed does his best Sergeant Schultz impression. Paladino’s presence in the race is quite literally an insult to everyone’s intelligence. The laundry list of reasons not to consider him is long and wildly uncomplicated.

I wish Democratic candidate Max Della Pia best of luck in getting his message out there. Hopefully he’s known in the Southern Tier, but he has a lot of work to do to get some name recognition in Buffalo. Also one has to hope that no former Democratic candidates for Congress pop out of the woodwork to make a big mess of things like they have, say, on multiple previous occasions.

Just when things start looking a little less bleak, we are showered with bleakness galore.